All the young dudes

Chapter 13:a night at the opera

***

"Mind you lot pay me back," Peter says. He stops to cough, and Tesla meows in protest on his lap. "I mowed lawns for this. Your go, Padfoot."

Sirius lays down a card, which erupts into sparks. He makes a half-hearted attempt to light the joint with it, gives up, uses his wand. Their compartment at the back of the train has gotten a bit hazy. "How much?"

"Twelve pounds. Clive says he gave me a cousin discount but I don't believe him."

Lunging sideways over the seats, one of which happens to contain Remus, Sirius retrieves his bag from under the compartment window. "Dunno what that means. Hang on." He digs through the bag with his free hand, gets some gold coins from one of the inner pockets, and dumps them onto the seat next to Peter, where Carlos the puffskein is rolling around. "That close?"

"Overshot a bit," Remus says. He looks over at Sirius, who's holding the joint lazily between two fingers like a cigarette. "Why d'you hold it like that?"

Sirius reclines back against the seat, takes a drag, exhales at length. "Looks cooler."

"No it doesn't."

"Does."

"You look like Liz Taylor."

Peter coughs his way into breathless laughter; Sirius bares his teeth in a snarl at a giggling Remus, and Tesla flees under the seats. James bites the head off a chocolate frog and says, "Who's Liz Taylor?"

"Almost as pretty as me, Prongs. Bite me, Moony. Whose go is it?"

"Go at what?" James says. "Oh, right." He looks at his cards, slightly cross-eyed, and tosses one down. "What's the score?"

"Fuck if I know," says Sirius.

"Wormtail?"

"Nine hundred and three to eight hundred and twenty."

"Excellent." James sticks his hand out to Sirius, opening and closing his fingers until the joint is deposited between them. "Merci. Reckon we break a thousand within the month?"

"Definitely."

"Dunno why we even try," Peter says. Remus hums in agreement.

Even while very evidently stoned, James does paternal disapproval well. "Now really. Is that any attitude to start off the term with?"

"When it's fifth year? Absolutely."

"You're bumming my high, Pettigrew."

"What? Everybody knows this year is horrible," Peter points out. "Not that you lot will have to worry, seeing as you're geniuses. But for the rest of us mere mortals it's a nightmare, everybody knows that."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," James says. He picks up Carlos, watches her roll up and down the length of his arm. "Look on the bright side— by the end of this year, we'll have a whole bunch of O.W.L.s and be able to bloody turn into animals. It'll be great, you just wait and see."

"Yeah," Remus mumbles to his hand of cards. "Great."

"We've got a whole month before the new moon to brew the last potion," Sirius says. "Anything weird in this one?"

"Nah, recipe looked pretty simple. Probably won't have to steal anything, unfortunately."

"Couldn't have done, anyway— we've a prefect in our midst."

"Fuck off," Remus says.

"Think it's not on that a transfiguration spell has got so much potion-y stuff mixed up with it," James says. "And it's got to sit for five whole months! Where will we keep it, even?"